Big numbers, brilliant minds, mind-boggling concepts

THERE are children in Tokyo, trained in after-school abacus clubs, who can sum up to 30 large numbers using only the mental image of an abacus, and do it faster than someone with an electronic calculator. And there's a mathematician in New York whose intricate crocheting has allowed her colleagues to visualise various surfaces in hyperbolic space for the first time. These are some of the delightful characters that populate Alex's Adventures in Numberland.

As well as describing his interactions with a range of brilliant minds, Bellos careers lucidly through the most mind-boggling concepts with which they grapple. Some beautiful explanations include why infinity comes in different sizes and why Euclid's postulates only hold for flat space. The end result is a page-turner about humanity's strange, never easy and above all never dull, relationship with numbers.

Book information:Alex's Adventures in Numberland: Dispatches from the wonderful world of mathematics by Alex BellosPublished by Bloomsbury£18.99

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